Prospect.3 New Orleans, the third iteration of the citywide international art exhibition that first wowed the art world in 2008, takes place Oct. 25 through Jan. 25. The big, irregularly scheduled show promises to provide Crescent Cityites and visitors with dozens of individual exhibits in venues across the city.

Basquiat (1960-1988) is certainly the most famous artist of his generation, and his work remains resonant today. He began as a teenage graffiti writer during the late '70s, early '80s heyday of tagging. Discovered by the commercial art world, Basquiat's expressionist painting style soon led to immense popularity and profit. In time, Basquiat became the painterly protégé of Pop art legend Andy Warhol. The 27-year-old artist traveled to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1988. That same year, his meteoric art world rise ended, when he died of a drug overdose. His life story was told in the 1996 film, "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child."

In a written statement, Prospect.3 curator Franklin Sirmans said that "'Basquiat and the Bayou' explores a body of work representing Basquiat's internal fight with the shadows of the American South, shaped by a long history of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. New Orleans is the crossroads where the Mississippi greets the Middle Passage, and shortly before his death, Basquiat visited the city. He knew the importance to his work of the South and New Orleans specifically. The selection of works in the present exhibition explores themes of geography, history, and cultural legacy in Basquiat's work in a number of ways."

Shaped painting by Prospect.3 artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) of the United States (Courtesy Prospect.3 New Orleans)

"At a casual glance Basquiat's paintings look as if they'd been made by a brilliant, autodidactic schizophrenic driven to download his inner demons, obsessions and fantastical ideas by whatever means possible. He worked rapidly with brushes, oil-stick markers, spray paint and other implements... You can imagine the creative persona Basquiat's art conjures, muttering and chortling to himself while compulsively improvising his chartlike compositions of cartoon images, glyphic signs and enigmatic word lists."

"At only 23, Basquiat was already far into his art career—he began as a graffiti artist in 1976, working with a high-school friend under the name SAMO. By 1983 Basquiat had moved onto painting and was something of the toast of the town collaborating with our (Interview magazine's) founder, Andy Warhol, appearing in Blondie music videos ("Rapture") and showing alongside artists like Julian Schnabel. He also had a music project, Gray, with some other downtown '80s scenesters, such as Vincent Gallo. In 1988, Basquiat died from a heroin overdose—a fact that makes many of his answers in this interview particularly upsetting."

In a telling passage, Basquiat explained that he would have liked to have been the very best artist in his (high school?) class, but "my work had a really ugly edge to it." Geldzahler asked the 23-year-old artist if he felt the ugly edge could be traced to anger.

"There was a lot of ugly stuff going on at the time in my family," Basquiat said.

A 2014 Vanity Fair magazine story titled, "For The Love of Basquiat" by Ingrid Sischy tells the story of two art collectors who befriended the young artist and own several of his drawings. In one paragraph, Sischy helps define the circumstances that Basquiat suggested above.

"The artist spoke only loving words about his mother," Sischy wrote, "who was the first person to take him to museums, but whose emotional fragility landed her in psychiatric institutions. Having permanently left his father's home at 17, he did not hide their strained relationship."

In a closing paragraph, Sischy describes the ever-rising marketplace value of Basquiat's work.

"In the early days Basquiat's paintings went for around $15,000–$20,000," Sischy wrote, "last year, a Basquiat painting was knocked down (sold) at Christie's (auction company) in New York for $48,843,750.